


and the lizard's name was dog

by endeofblood



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/M, Humanstuck, M/M, Multi, because everybody loves a roadtrip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endeofblood/pseuds/endeofblood
Summary: Somewhere along the 2,151-mile expanse of I-70, a 1982 Toyota Hiace rattled across the American West.  The contents of the aging van were as follows:-Three recent high school graduates-The contents of a modestly sized 7-11-A giant lizard in a baby diaper





	and the lizard's name was dog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [graveExcitement (arachnids)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnids/gifts).



> "i love the way these three synergize! the way they work together and balance each other out is just really interesting to me. i like these three as friends, flushed, pale, some flushed-pale combo where one or two of the individual pairings are flushed and the other one or two is pale... any of those are good! you could even throw some black romance in there if you wanted :U
> 
> basically, if you're looking for a prompt, just... something about these three working together and balancing each other out. alternatively, it might be pretty neat to see these three sparring..."

“Siri, do lizards eat people?”  
  
“Here’s what I found on the web for ‘Do lizards eat people’.”  
  
“No, I mean really big lizards.”  
  
“Checking on that… here’s what I found on the web for ‘No I mean really big lizards’.”  
  
“You’re useless,” Sollux informed his phone, before dropping it back down on his lap.  The aforementioned lizard had been staring at him from the adjacent seat for several unblinking moments, and Sollux was less than satisfied by the list of Quora articles and Yahoo Answers that assured him there weren’t many species of domesticated reptiles that would make a quick snack out of a set of his fingers.  …The Ace Attorney toddler sized diaper it was sporting admittedly did a little to undermine its overall threat level, but Phoenix Wright’s blank, unassuming smile shining up from the backside of a two and a half foot long progeny of Godzilla somehow made the situation a little creepier regardless.  
  
“Sollux—“ The sharp voice came from the shotgun side of the car, climbing half an indignant octave over the two syllables of his name alone “— _stop_ being so _dramatic._  I’m dating Karkat, and Karkat’s dating you, so by transitive property Dog is our collective son, and you’re going to give him a complex in formative years with all this kind of negative language!”  
  
“I just spent half an hour sorting the four packages of starbursts from our 7-11 haul into sandwich baggies by color, and you’re really going to start lecturing me about my poorly aligned chakras, TZ?  If my painstaking efforts to satisfy the synesthesia of a blind woman isn’t child support, then I sure don’t fucking know what is.”  
  
Terezi barked out a laugh, propping her boots up on the dashboard.  That triggered an automatic response from Karkat in the driver’s seat, who reached over to swat her feet away, somehow managing to steer the hulking vehicle with one hand while smoothing away the scuff marks she left with his opposite sleeve.  She didn’t seem particularly bothered, just unwrapping another starburst from the designated orange starburst baggie on her lap and popping it into her mouth, letting the sugar get gummy and dissolve on her tongue.  It wasn’t that she could smell colors, but the synesthesia meant she conceptualized their tastes in her mind in shapes and textures.  As her best friend, the color division duty fell on Sollux.  She once told him that ‘orange’ tasted like a line that sloped forwards, upwards, then curled slightly in, and that it was smooth and broad.  He had no fucking idea what that meant.   
  
“I hope you two clowns are having a real grand old titling away in the chucklefuck van, but this thing’s on rental from—“  
  
“Your grandpa,” Sollux and Terezi chimed in simultaneously, in practiced sing-song.  It was at least the eighth time since leaving that morning that they’d gotten the lecture.   
  
“Absolutely precious.”  Karkat somehow still sounded less than charmed.  “While you two were busy rehearsing that, did anybody, and by anybody I mean the only member of the party who isn’t driving and is in possession of functioning eyeballs, check where we turn off next?”  
  
“The map says keep going along the interstate until we hit I-76 and then I-25 in Denver.”  Sollux had the thing balanced on his bony knees, their route highlighted in a bright yellow sharpie.  “And then I’m pretty sure it’s at least fifteen hours from Denver to Whitefish, and considering the fact we aren’t even out of _Kansas_ yet we should probably stop before it gets dark.”  
  
Which wouldn’t be before too long, judging from the state of the sky.  The flat planes of the Midwest seemed to stretch endlessly in either direction, carpeted on either side by the sandy brown of Summer wheat.  The way it rolled out from the interstate almost gave the impression of vast beaches, broken by the wide spirals left by tractors.  Above, fingers of red and orange carved ribbons into the sky, and the sun was threatening to dip closer to the horizon.  It at least signaled the fact that the heat was beginning to wane—the thermostat on the car registered at a humid 82, but it was dropping further by the hour.   
  
“If we want to spend an entire week at the Pyropes’ cabin, we have to get there by the end of Sunday, remember?”  Karkat fussed with the rearview mirror as he spoke, as if there was anything to see behind him aside from a semi-truck half a mile down the road.   
  
“Latula and Mituna aren’t planning on visiting until July, and I _think_ taking a deep breath or twelve would be good for you.  The week thing wasn’t a hard limit, that’s just what my mom suggested.” Terezi’s feet went back up on the dash, and Karkat pushed them back off, like clockwork.   
  
“I don’t think they’re going to send the Whitefish Police Department after us if we stay there a couple of extra days, KK,” Sollux agreed.   
  
“Fine, since you two seem to be in total agreement on everything tonight, where are we sleeping?”  
  
“How about the van?”  Terezi suggested, sitting up a little straighter, and reaching around the back of her seat to stretch a hand outwards towards Dog.  Her lizard nuzzled into her palm, and she administered skritches accordingly.  
  
“—What?  _Why?_ ” It was Sollux’s turn to sound indignant.  “Can we not find some shitty motel or something?  Jesus, I thought the point of pulling over somewhere for the night was so that we don’t smell like fish cubes and moth balls for the rest of our lives.”  
  
“There’s so much room in the back, can’t we get a mattress?”  
  
“There’s no way a mattress is going to fit back there, and this is neither the Mystery Machine nor a 60s free love van.  I appreciate the fact we’re really trying to stick to our coming-of-age roadtrip aesthetic, here, but we can do that somewhere with the comfort of four walls and a running tap.”  
  
“We’re both dating Karkat, what do you mean this isn’t a love van?”  
  
“Okay, dismissal of monogamous heteronormative culture aside, you know that’s not what I meant.”  
  
That actually earned a snicker from Karkat, who gave a sidelong glance to Terezi, then looked at Sollux in the rearview.  “Oh, I’m sorry, is there trouble in paradise?”  
  
“Do you have a better suggestion?”  Terezi asked, a little pointedly.  
  
“No, no, _why_ would _I,_ humble driver that I am, have anything to contribute to this situation?  Clearly I’m just a pair of hands on the wheels and a foot on the gas pedal, you two are the executive decision makers around here.”  
  
“Oh, come on, Karkat, don’t be like that just because we didn’t want you to give yourself an aneurysm by driving all night.” Terezi bridged the gap between their two seats, tapping him lightly on the arm.  He ignored her for a moment, but when she insistently repeated the motion, he surrendered his hand and she laced her fingers through it with a little squeeze.  Karkat, in turn, thumbed over her knuckles.  Sollux watched the exchange from the back seat with half a smile, something in his chest tightening fondly.  “Besides,” she continued, “if we sleep in the van, it’ll be cleaner.  Sollux _always_ has to give his spiel about what goes on between motel sheets, and it’ll spare us all this time.”  
  
“We can stop at a Walmart,” Karkat conceded.  “I don’t think we’ll find the right size of mattress, but if we get the right bedding, we can _maybe_ consider camping out in the back of the car.”  
  
“Okay, since I’m outnumbered two to one anyway, I just want to say I don’t _always_ —“  
  
“Yes you do.” _That_ was both Karkat and Terezi, and the hand-hold turned into an under the dash high five.   
  
  
  
Forty-five minutes of driving later, night had all but set, the western horizon accented by the last fading efforts of sunlight.  It had taken that entire forty-five minutes to reach WaKeeny, the midpoint between Kansas City and Denver—the town was barely a rural pinprick on the face of the state, but it at least sported a Walmart Supercenter.  The moment the van came to a halt in the parking lot, the three of them piled out.  Though Dog was a registered service animal (!!) Terezi begrudgingly agreed to leave him in the car, since they were still working on the leash training thing.  
  
Truly, the liminal space that is Walmart after dark has a special kind of magic.  Stepping in from the dark outside to the florescent lights was like breaching into another world, one where all of the denizens were dead eyed and would rather be somewhere else.  The utter lack of windows—save the sliding doors out front--just added another layer of disconnection to reality, but there was a small comfort in knowing that one was able to buy Cheez Whiz at any time of night, even if a pocket dimension was definitely created in the process.  
  
“Remember, we’re _just_ here for bedding.  We already bought out the entire snack section of a gas station, and if we really need food we can stop for a late dinner, but we don’t need any more dehydrated beef or fried potatoes and fried potato byprodu—ts.  Byproducts.”  
  
While he was talking, Sollux slipped in on his other side—Karkat still had his fingers interwoven with Terezi’s, and Sollux claimed his free hand.  That surprised him into a stutter, as if they had just started dating last week, and Sollux found it horribly, disgustingly endearing.  So did Terezi—she planted a quick kiss on Karkat’s cheek, and while PDA wasn’t his absolute favorite thing, Sollux couldn’t help but follow suit.  A distinct flush of red crept up Karkat’s neck.  
  
“So, where to?” Terezi asked, before Karkat had a chance to respond.   
  
“I think bedding’s this way.”  Sollux used his grip on Karkat’s hand to drag what basically amounted to a small chain of teenagers through Walmart.  Terezi’s light up sketchers announced their progress at every step as they wove their way through shelves of canned food and bins of bargain movies.   
  
The Home section was a tour de force of appliances and floral, and in several particularly devastating instances, floral appliances.  “Why get pillows and blankets when we can just as easily have our own DIY soda maker?”  Sollux asked idly, as Karkat yanked him clear past the aisle.  
  
“It’d probably pay for itself by the time you’re done irradiating your liver with code red and voltage,” Terezi agreed.  “It’s all about basic economics!  Also, on a totally unrelated note, you should _really_ consider donating your body to science, the public deserves to know if it’s really possible for all that sugar to crystalize in your organs.”   
  
“Four liters, Captor,” Karkat interjected.  “I went ahead and crunched the numbers, since that’s your language of choice.  That’s one hundred and thirty five ounces of fluid.  You bought five and a half bottles of wine worth of Mountain Dew at that 7-11, which will forever stand as a highway landmark as a monument to your hubris.”  
  
“…So I take it that’s a ‘maybe’ on the soda maker?” They finally reached the bedding section—the air had a quality that could only be described as vaguely _crinkly_ , the texture of starch and the faintest smell of pressed sheets and laundry detergent.  Terezi’s nose wrinkled at the scent as Sollux continued: “Besides, since we’re ‘crunching the numbers,’ I bought gram for gram just as much sugar as either one of you.”  
  
“I bought the chocolate hearts as a goddamn romantic gesture.  It’s traditional, you actual fucking philistines.”  
  
“Buying chocolate hearts from a gas station and then eating half of them yourself in the car is about as traditional as the rest of this relationship,” said Terezi, but her half-crescent grin was a sloppy lid on the undertone of her voice; a genuine kind of teasing giddiness threatened to overflow from beneath.  
  
Karkat opened his mouth to protest, but Terezi’s expression seemed to take the metaphorical wind out from the metaphorical sails of his very real complaints.  Instead of getting embarrassed again, he opted to drop both their hands and busy himself with surveying the selection of comforters.  Sinking his fingers in the folds of a particularly squishy polka dot disaster kicked up another whiff of detergent, and Sollux coughed dramatically for effect, even if it wasn’t all that strong.  
  
“As absolutely exciting as this is, it looks like you two have this down pat.  I’m going to go make sure Dog hasn’t eaten through any beige vinyl headrests.”  
  
“Seriously, Sollux?  You can’t tolerate being in an upright position for ten more minutes just to humor us?”  Through the bluster, there was an edge of actual irritation in Karkat’s voice.  
  
“We’ve been in a car together for almost nine hours, KK.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”  
  
“Fine, okay, go.”  Karkat continued to prod at the abhorrently colorful roll of bedding, and Sollux ducked off.  Terezi listened to his retreating footsteps, and could have sworn she could hear Karkat’s eyes roll nearly as loudly.  
  
  
  
Twenty minutes passed before Terezi and Karkat were back in the parking lot.  Terezi had stacks of pillows in her arms up to her head—she had them tucked under her chin, led by Karkat’s touch on her elbow.  Karkat, meanwhile, had a blanket and hugely oversized comforter barely bundled under his arms.  All in all, it would have _probably_ been cheaper to book a motel, but Terezi had pinched a credit card from her mom for the week.  Neither Karkat nor Sollux had been inclined to ask for details.  
  
It took a bit of balancing and home decor tetris for Terezi to free her arms enough to pop the back of the van.   
  
“—Sollux, what?”  Karkat didn’t sound angry, he sounded—surprised?  Almost comically so.  
  
“What?  What did he do?”  Terezi asked, accompanied by a familiar snicker from inside the van.  
  
“It looks like—did you buy electric candles?”  
  
“Uh huh.”  There was the sound of shifting around as Sollux moved to make room for the blankets and pillows.  
  
“And _wine glasses_?”  
  
“Don’t get too excited, they were plastic and fifty cents a pop.  Your comment about Mountain Dew inspired me, KK, it really did.”   
  
Inside, the van looked like a parody of something romantic.  A handful of battery powered tea candles with LED lights were scattered around somewhat haphazardly, and Sollux had poured red mountain dew into three cheap glasses.  Once the pillows and blankets were arranged, it was dangerously cozy, and the three of them fit inside perfectly—including, of course, Dog, who came shuffling over from his seat during all the commotion and settled down against Terezi.  
  
“Are we allowed to sleep in a Walmart parking lot?”  Terezi asked after they had polished off the glasses of Mountain Dew and the rest of the chocolate hearts.  
  
“Oh, whatever.  Let the WaKeeny Police Department come after us,” Karkat responded from between the two of them, with the threat of a smile.  “We all deserve a deep breath or twelve.”  
  
The floodlights in the parking lot weren’t bright enough to keep any of them awake, and Karkat listened as Sollux’s breathing gradually evened out, and then Terezi’s.  Despite the fact that they bought what couldn’t have been any fewer than seven pillows, the former ended up with his head on Karkat’s shoulder, with the latter making her home on Karkat’s chest.  He pulled the comforter over all three of them, in all of its gaudy teal-yellow-red polkadot glory.  
  
“Happy first anniversary,” he mumbled to the quiet van, before the warmth and the silence took him off to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is so... self indulgent but I hope you like it!! it was really fun to write!  
> (also, so sorry for the lack of action/sparring, i'd be more than happy to do something less fluffy for you if you want!)


End file.
